I was re-reading a part of Moral Landscape this weekend and came across a
concept I had not shared yet.

It’s the idea of building the ultimate society by creating all the social
structures, advantages, disadvantages, tax codes, rules, laws, etc.–but with
no knowledge of who you will be within it.

So you build out whatever the world will look like, and then you randomly
get assigned an identity: Black woman, Hispanic man, young Asian child in
South Africa, White male in Australia–whatever.

[ NOTE: I now know this to be an established moral concept from Rawls. ]

I think it’s brilliant. ::

May 23, 2025